In psychology, there's something called the broken-leg problem. A statistical formula may be highly successful in predicting whether or not a person will go to a movie in the next week. But someone who knows that this person is laid up with a broken leg will beat the formula. No formula can take into account the infinite range of such exceptional events.

Atul Gawande

Categorized in : Next Week Successful Broken

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days.

Atul Gawande

good-day mean people

You know, 97 percent of the time, if you come into a hospital, everything goes well. But three percent of the time, we have major complications.

Atul Gawande

complication wells three

People have priorities besides just living longer, we have to ask that, but we don't ask. ... The result is the care we provide is not in alignment with their priorities.

Atul Gawande

company-news

We need to act through data tracking ... to see when treatments are benefiting and when they are not.

Atul Gawande

company-news

That is a disaster for any kind of healthcare. ... Life is the accumulation of chronic illnesses.

Atul Gawande

company-news

No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.

Atul Gawande

skill you writing hands

The writing I love has something memorable in it - an image, a smell. It's the connection between the moment and the whole concept, weaving the micro together with the macro so that it has a hold on people - that's writing.

Atul Gawande

moment together love people

The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal.

Atul Gawande

survive body brain heart

I think we are faced in medicine with the reality that we have to be willing to talk about our failures and think hard about them, even despite the malpractice system. I mean, there are things that we can do to make that system better.

Atul Gawande

better think medicine reality

I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write.

Atul Gawande

i-am never being born

My vantage point on the world is the operating room where I see my patients.

Atul Gawande

i-see room see world

The vast majority of doctors really do try to take the money out of their minds. But to provide the best possible care requires using resources in a way that keeps you viable but improves the quality of care.

Atul Gawande

best you quality money

Our health-care morass is like the problems of global warming and the national debt - the kind of vast policy failure that is far easier to get into than to get out of. Americans say that they want leaders who will take on these problems.

Atul Gawande

problems will global-warming failure

Doctors quickly learn that how much they make has little to do with how good they are. It largely depends on how they handle the business side of their practice.

Atul Gawande

how good business practice

I believe that one version of the good in life can be defined by the moments I sometimes had playing tennis as a sixteen-year-old. You'd be out on the court and for an hour, two hours, sometimes an entire roasting hot day, and every single thing you hit would go in. Hit that ball as hard as you wanted, wherever you wanted, and it went in.

Atul Gawande

day good you life

I have always believed that there is nothing greater than a life in rock n' roll - it has to be good rock n' roll - and I still think it is true.

Atul Gawande

nothing good think life

I write because it's my way of finding cool ideas, thinking through hard problems and things I don't understand, and getting better at something.

Atul Gawande

problems better cool thinking

People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money. It's that we order all the money.

Atul Gawande

doctor medical money people

Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.

Atul Gawande

great you ignorance struggle

I'm floating between multiple media. I really wish you could buy the hardcover book and it would come with the digital download and audible version. I spend stupid amounts of money because I'm usually buying my books in at least two formats.

Atul Gawande

you money stupid book